Sixteen and hacked: the challenges of running One Direction's biggest Twitter fan account

It's not easy running one of the world's largest One Direction Twitter fan accounts. With more than 870,000 followers, @STYLATORARMY -- run by 16-year-old SJ [who doesn't wish to reveal her full name] -- has a bigger Twitter audience than Richard Dawkins, MTV UK, Boris Johnson and Topshop. "I just think I tweet the content that people are interested in.

Usually it's just anything to do with the boys," SJ told Wired.co.uk in a phone call, explaining how she managed to amass so many followers in just three years. She tends to tweet out pictures, comments and links to 1D-related content, interspersed with messages about shows such as X Factor, which discovered "the boys".

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In those three years, SJ's account has been targeted a three times by hackers keen to take hold of her enormous following.

Please don't call us Directioners, it's really cringeySJ

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The most sophisticated attempt involved someone contacting her over email, proclaiming to be a representative from One Direction's management and asking for her log-in details. "It looked real. They even emailed me from the domain that One Direction would use [onedirectionmusic.com]."

The would-be hackers dangled incentives in a bid to lure SJ. "They said 'you'll be an official star and we'll give you VIP access to the boys, tickets and shows, award shows'."

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SJ wasn't convinced: "I thought it was too good to be true," SJ said, adding that despite emailing from a spoofed domain they asked her to reply to a Hotmail address. "I guess they thought fans want access to the boys so much [that I'd be fooled into letting them take control of the account]. But when I was emailing them I was very careful not to agree to anything. I just answered questions, but they were being very weird about it. They even said they'd verify my Twitter account. I asked them how they would go about doing this and they started saying some really weird stuff and eventually asked for my log-in details."

SJ followed her intuition, double-checking with her tech-savvy mum and some music industry insiders to confirm that it was dodgy. "If they were for real, they wouldn't need your log-in details.

Plus the emails had loads of typos in them."

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A previous attempt saw someone successfully take over her account, change her Twitter handle and start to send uncharacteristic tweets. "Friends started saying that it wasn't SJ and people started spamming their account," she explained. She managed to take control of the account by appealing to the Twitter powers that be.

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The One Direction fans ("please don't call us Directioners, it's really cringey," says SJ) on Twitter appear to be a tight community, but does SJ ever experience the negative side of social media? "No, usually everyone is quite nice. You get the odd one or two people saying 'I hate you', but there will always be the odd one or two," she says.

What about the violent tweets that Wired's stable-mate GQ received in the wake of featuring the members of One Direction on the magazine's cover? "I know our fandom can be seen in quite a negative light, but I don't think all 1D fans are aggressive. I'd say they were more passionate about the boys. It's a bit like football," SJ muses, "there's always that one unruly person at a game who will get up and cause havoc and start a fight." "It's the same with 1D fans," she continues. "Most of the time the people who make the fandom appear in a negative way aren't even fans anyway, they are just randomers. You know at school there will always be that one bully in the class, but that doesn't mean that the whole class are bullies."

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GQ "didn't match the boys' personalities at all". She suggests that it "would be good if you had fans give advice on what

[coverlines] would work and what people would actually go and buy. "[GQ] didn't portray the boys as how they are."

Whatever GQ did or didn't do with the words that came out of the band members' mouth, the episode showed how quickly 1D fans can activate: GQ.co.uk even briefly crashed under the strain of the response.

BuddyBounce

It's precisely this power in numbers that allows SJ and other fans to very quickly create a Twitter trending topic. "I can just tweet 'guys let's trend this' and other people will see it and share it."

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Wired.co.uk asked when the last time was that SJ got something trending. "Today," she said, as if it was no big deal. "In the UK?" we asked. "No, worldwide."

What was it? It was a link to a platform called BuddyBounce, along with the rallying hashtag #DirectionersJoinBuddyBounce.

BuddyBounce is a UK startup that aims to bridge the gap between fans and their idols.

It works by ranking fans of certain artists across social media, be it Twitter, Facebook, Soundcloud, Spotify or Tumblr. The site will monitor how regularly you tweet about a band or listen to their music on Spotify, and attribute points accordingly. It also allows artists and their labels to run giveaways and promotions amongst some their most engaged fans.

One of BuddyBounce's key attractions seems to be the fact that it doesn't just reward people with large social media followings.

Fans can be recognised for their dedication on a weekly basis, if they create content that other members of the BuddyBounce community like, they watch a lot of their favourite band's videos, or if they get mentioned or retweeted by the object of their affections.

SJ explains that fairness is important for dedicated 1D fans. "Fans are always saying 'that's not fair'," she says. "If the US got meet-and-greets but the UK didn't get any, US and UK fans might be fighting for a while on Twitter. BuddyBounce stops all of that."

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SJ hopes that through platforms like BuddyBounce, One Direction's management team -- or the band itself -- will engage with fans a little more. "We are promoting the boys as well as them. We are like their mini marketers. It's fun because we love them, but it would be nice to be noticed [by management and by the band] as well."

What's the highest praise for a One Direction superfan on Twitter? Being followed by the band's main account @onedirection as well as by the individual member account. Sadly, this is something missing from SJ's life. "Liam and Louie followed me before but I got hacked and now they don't follow me any more," she explains, despondently.

At the time of writing, SJ's Twitter account wasn't followed by any of the boys. Nor was it verified.